Sunday, November 26, 2006

It's kind of difficult to see, but in the past week this blog has had 85 visits with the total pages viewed at 179! Usually I only get about 50 visits and those are all from my best friend and my sister-in-law!! hehe... 'Course the true test is how many of those that wandered in off of Google and such come BACK, but first things first, I'm happy to have the traffic.

Chart from Google Analytics, a cool FREE device useful for real blogs that sell stuff, etc. and have thousands of hits a day. You know it's cool if it lets me in with my tiny blog!

Parasite-infected dragonflies suffer the same metabolic disorders that have led to an epidemic of obesity and type-2 diabetes in humans, reveal the findings of research conducted at Penn State University that are due to be published in the 5 December 2006 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and also in the PNAS early online edition at http://www.pnas.org/. The discovery expands the known taxonomic breadth of metabolic disease and suggests that the study of microbes found in human intestines may provide a greater understanding of the root causes of human metabolic dysfunction.

James Marden, professor of biology and an insect physiologist at Penn State, and Ruud Schilder, who in August 2006 earned his doctorate in biology at Penn State and is now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nebraska, are the first to show a non-mammalian species suffering from metabolic dysfunction in ways similar to humans. "Metabolic disease isn't some strange thing having just to do with humans," said Marden. "Animals in general suffer from these symptoms."

The work is also novel because it links metabolic disease to a supposedly harmless parasite living in the dragonfly's gut. The parasites, known as gregarines, belong to the Apicomplexa, a group of microorganisms that includes protozoa, which cause diseases like malaria and cryptosporidiosis. The dragonfly species that Marden and Schilder studied is Libellula pulchella. The microbes disrupting the dragonfly metabolism may hold clues for scientists looking for the root causes of metabolic diseases in humans, according to Marden and Schilder's paper

"All of these symptoms, and the underlying processes behind these symptoms that we're seeing in these dragonflies, are pretty much identical to what you see in mammalian metabolic syndrome and obesity," said Marden. "We're seeing it all relate back to this non-invasive protozoan in the gut." The work raises a fascinating question about what role microbial communities found in human intestines may play in human metabolic disorders like insulin resistance, type-2 diabetes, and obesity. In mammals, these metabolic disorders are known to be associated with a chronic inflammatory response, thought to be triggered by an accumulation of fat.

In Marden and Schilder's dragonflies, the reverse happens. Parasitic infection triggers an inflammatory response and immediate changes in metabolism. Unable to metabolize fat, the dragonflies accumulate fat around their muscles. This finding begs the question of whether something similar might be happening in human metabolic diseases, the root causes of which remain poorly understood despite intense study.

"Might disturbances in the microbial balance of human intestines trigger an immune system response that leads to metabolic disease?" Marden and Schilder asked. "More attention should be paid to the microbial balance in the intestines of people who suffer from obesity," said Schilder. "It seems plausible that disturbance in the microbial community in humans might trigger these inflammatory responses."

There are some other clues indicating that this may be an important question. "What we're finding in insects is that they become obese when parasites cause inflammation that affects metabolism," said Marden. "That seems akin to what's happening in humans when they get type-2 diabetes. It's not because there's been a change in the genetic composition of the population. it's because something has changed in our environment." One change in the human environment is the dramatic increase in soft-drink consumption among Americans, estimated to be 500 percent over 50 years from the 1940s to the 1990s. "We looked in the literature and found that consumption of high-fructose corn syrup often is associated with gastrointestinal distress, which may be a sign that fructose affects the gut microbial flora," said Marden.

Another clue is that some AIDS patients, with compromised immune systems, have chronic problems with Cryptosporidium (a protozoan parasite closely related to the one found in dragonflies) that over time impairs their metabolism in a similar fashion to what Schilder and Marden found for infected dragonflies. "That information gave us the courage to connect the dots," said Marden. "Granted, it is a big extrapolation to think that our dragonfly results might have any relevance for human disease, but it would be irresponsible for us to not point out these possibilities. People who study metabolic disease should test the hypothesis that changes in gut microbial composition can cause these syndromes."

Marden's lab, which studies how insect muscles work and affect the animal's survival and reproductive capabilities, can mechanically isolate single flight muscles and measure their mechanical power output under conditions similar to those in nature. The researchers noted that the muscles of some dragonflies are able to perform at 80 watts per kg. while others of the same species could perform at up to 220 watts per kg. The life of a dragonfly and successful mating requires intense competition for pond territory, aerial contests, and high-performance flight. "These guys are the jet fighters of the insect world," said Marden. Flight muscle makes up 60 percent of their body mass. The large variation in muscle output was intriguing because natural selection, over time, would weed out the submissive, poor flyers if the trait were genetically based. When the researchers looked in the gut of the dragonflies with poor muscle output, they found parasites.

Healthy dragonflies can adjust their muscle performance according to how much fat they have available in their bodies, but the dragonflies infected with parasites weren't making that adjustment, Marden observed. He and Schilder began looking for an explanation and ultimately found many key differences between the tissues and performance of healthy dragonflies and parasite-infected dragonflies that match symptoms of metabolic syndrome in humans. One symptom involves the signaling molecule, p38 MAP kinase, a common indicator of stress response in humans and other animals. The signaling molecule was chronically activated in the flight muscles of parasite-infected dragonflies, but not in muscles from healthy dragonflies. Activation of p38 MAP kinase has been shown to be related to the development of insulin resistance and metabolic disease in humans. "What's more, we could induce this activation in muscles from healthy individuals by exposing them to excretory-secretory products obtained from the gregarine parasites," said Schilder.

The researchers also found that the muscles of parasite-infected dragonflies oxidized only carbohydrates instead of a carbohydrate-lipid mix. A common symptom of metabolic syndrome is that muscles metabolize fewer lipids. The researchers also found that unused lipids accumulated in the dragonflies' thorax. Humans with metabolic disease tend to accumulate fat around skeletal muscle tissue.

Marden and Schilder's experiments also found the hemolymph carbohydrate concentrations in parasite-infected dragonflies to be about double those of healthy dragonflies, and found insulin to have little effect on those concentrations. Insulin resistance is an abnormality associated with metabolic syndrome in humans. The researchers found the parasites rapidly caused effects in the dragonflies. Dragonflies that drank water containing trace amounts of excretory-secretory substances obtained from live parasites showed effects in two days. Abnormal blood glucose concentrations are a symptom of metabolic syndrome in humans. Marden and Schilder also concluded that insects may be useful models to understand more about metabolic disease in humans. Their work was supported by grants from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

I had a discussion with my cardiologist not to long ago about how it's not just lifestyle and genetics that cause obesity......he said something else has to be happening and I agreed. Personally I've never been a huge overeater, I just made unwise choices. You hear about people that eat whole chickens and loaves of bread and such and I never did anything like that and yet I couldn't take it off and keep it off. It also seems that the less one eats when they are obese the more the body is determined to keep the fat at all costs. I find this study fascinating. I probably won't see a cure for obesity in my lifetime, but I just love the thought that maybe such a cure will be possible someday.

The Low Authority Group [D-List Bloggers](3-9 blogs linking in the last 6 months)The average blog age (the number of days that the blog has been in existence) is about 228 days, which shows a real commitment to blogging. However, bloggers of this type average only 12 posts per month, meaning that their posting habits are generally dedicated but infrequent.

I'm personally THRILLED that ANYONE has linked my blog to theirs! I don't know how many have, but God bless 'em, I love 'em all!

If the key to blog success is volume, then yep I'm right up there with the lamers only having an average of 12 posts per month. Sigh. I'd like to claim that's because I have a real life, but who am I kidding? I'm strictly a go-with-the-flow, when the spirit moves me kinda writer. In fact, I can't even WRITE the word 'writer' without cracking up. Mostly what I do is babble. I'm pretty sure I make no bones about it, it's right up there for the whole world to see. I like to think I see humor in situations, but then I've been known to wise-crack in the MOST inappropriate places i.e. funerals, funeral homes, church, solemn occasions, during speeches, when I get bored, when I see phony people acting like big shots, when I see big shots acting like they care about anyone but their powerbase etc. It's both a gift and a curse. It's the bane of my kid's existence too. They'd love to loving stuff a sock in my face! (But that's another story for another day!)

According to what I could glean from the ratings, if this blog just hangs in there it might move up a grade. If I started posting my buns off it certainly would because for THIS rating it's all about how much rather than how inspired. I found a perverse silver lining though, it could of been rated "F" .....

Thursday, November 23, 2006

GREENLEAF — After watching the chaos of Hurricane Katrina, Steven Jett, a city councilman in this tiny town founded by pacifist Quakers and carved between the Owyhee Mountains and mint fields, proposed a law.

Ordinance 208, passed by the City Council on Tuesday, asks Greenleaf's residents who do not object on religious or other grounds to keep a gun in the home.

Jett, a former Canyon County deputy sheriff, said citizens should be armed in case Greenleaf, which sits on high ground, is overrun by refugees in a Katrina-like flood.

The town is surrounded by three reservoirs and an earthen dam, Jett said. Plus, Idaho could see a major earthquake, he said.

"This is not an ‘it'll never happen here kind of thing,' " Jett said. "We could get refugees."

Greenleaf doesn't really have crime, at least as most cities define it. The most violent offense reported in the past two years was a fist fight.

"We don't have a crime problem," Jett said. "But this area is going to grow, and we're going to keep it that way."

Amazing and the wave of the future IMHO. Teach and preach and wish and dream all you want about nonviolence, but until the criminals lay down their weapons, people ought to have a fighting chance for survival. Those that would take the guns out of the hands of law abiding citizens would like to think that overnight crime would just fade away. What are they smoking?!? Cain didn't have a handgun and look what he did to Able! (The exact method of murder varies with some traditions proposing a stone, others a cane, and others by Strangulation. Medieval traditions viewed the murder weapon as being a plough.) We can't ever go back in time we can only move forward. We're never going to be 1950 or whatever it is that people yearn for again.

Texas Attorney General: "“Phishing” scams have been around since the early days of the Internet. They involve sending an e-mail that looks as if it's from a legitimate bank or merchant asking consumers to re-submit their personal information. Generally, phishing scam emails are intended to cause alarm by telling the consumer that they must resubmit personal information immediately or their accounts will be “suspended.” Consumers are then typically asked to click on a link that takes them to a legitimate-looking Web page in which they are asked to resubmit their personal information, such as account number and passwords.

In a new twist, “vishing” takes advantage of even newer technology to defraud unsuspecting consumers.

Like with phishing scams, vishing typically starts with the same alarming email which appears to be from a legitimate business or banking institution. But rather than instructing consumers to resubmit their personal information online, vishing emails tell the victim to call a phone number through which they can provide their information. When the consumer calls, an automated message identifies itself as the bank or retailer that sent the original email and prompts the consumers to key-in their personal information. Once this information is entered, the scam artist will be able to access the consumer’s account or open lines of credit in his or her name, thus causing considerable harm.

Consumers who by now are wary of dubious emails that link to bogus Web pages might not be as reluctant to call a phone number, especially if it appears to be a local call. However, identity thieves who perpetrate vishing often use new technology that enables them to subscribe to Internet-based phone service via Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP). This makes it possible for a scam artist thousands of miles away to set up a phone account that victims might believe is a local call. But just as in a phishing scam, victims will be submitting their sensitive information to a thief beyond the reach of law enforcement in the United States.

The warning remains the same: Never respond to an email that purports to be from your bank or other business that threatens “suspension” of your account or a similar drastic action unless you immediately re-submit your personal information, either by clicking on a link or calling a phone number. Legitimate businesses do not contact and threaten their clients in this manner. If you have any questions about such emails, contact the bank or business purportedly sending the email directly based on a phone number that appears in the phone directory or your statements. DO NOT call a phone number that appears on an email.

courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time; Enjoying one moment at a time; Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace; Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it; Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His Will; That I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with Him Forever in the next. Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

It's simple but effective. It's also extremly difficult for me to practice. I tend to worry. I worry about the past, the present and the future. I'm ingrained with the "do the job yourself if you want it done right" doctrine. I keep telling myself to QUIT IT, but myself is usually off worrying about something or someone. Sigh. I really need to work on this. OR adopt the Scarlett mantra "I'll worry about it tomorrow".

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Today would of been my Daddy's 96th and my husbands' 66th birthdays. They were the two most important men in my life. I'm probably the last of the fems that was handed off from the father to the groom with no on-your-own time in between. NOW I'm having my on-your-own time. When I see little old ladies holding hands with their little old mates, I wonder why I can't be like that. I come home to my old dog and he doesn't even hear me coming in anymore. I still feel that both of them are watching over me so that helps.

I almost feel guilty today because this is the first for both of them that I haven't cried and cried. 'Course if I keep writing in this vein in might start the water works! I know they are both supposed to be in a better place and I'm not ready to visit that place, but it still makes me so mad that they had to go and so many scumbags are hanging on. Then when I stop and think about it, Daddy would of hated being 96 especially if he couldn't take care of himself and John wouldn't of been so crazy about being 66 for the same reason. So I guess I'll have to bow my head to the good Lord and say 'thanks for taking care of them for me'.

On the plus side my eldest daughter and her hubby are trying to celebrate their 14th wedding anniversary today. John's been gone 10 years in December so that's ten of those fourteen that they had to squeeze their joy into the sadness. Their wonderful accomplishment has been overshadowed and that's not right. The same can be said for my middle daughter and her husband who will celebrate their 11th 12th anniversary on the 10th anniversary of his passing, December 17, 1996. How weird is that?

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. I'm looking forward to having a nice, quiet one with the "kids". I'm thankful that I have the kids! How sad it would be to be alone on a holiday! How lucky I am that all my children live close by and I can see them often. I think that surely heads the top of my Thankful List this and every year. John was called and he had to go, but he left me loving comfort in his absence. How good is that?

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

My God there might actually be some decency left in the world afterall! Fox actually cancelled their interviews with The Killer and the sales of his book have dropped. Pity the fools that actually bought the thing, but they are the same people that clog the freeways oogling traffic accidents hoping to catch a glimpse of horror. I hope Nicole's sister and Goldman's sister live to be 110 and outlive The Killer so they can squelch his every effort to pretend he didn't do it and profit from their misery. Just because The Juice was juiced the night he committed the slayings doesn't make it not so, OJerk!

Monday, November 20, 2006

It’s been 2 weeks today since my Roux-en-y surgery and I’m still amazed by it all. I take one tablespoon of Tylenol with Codeine at night and that’s it. I still have some harsh gas pains from time to time that strike with no warning and take my breath away with their severity, but by and large I’m pain free.

When the doctor took my staples out (it was no biggie after all!), he lifted the No Lift, No Bend rule slightly. I can lift if it’s not more than 25 pounds and I’m not sure I could lift more than 25 pounds right now anyway! I can bend down to pick up the millions of every day items that women/moms have been picking up since the days of keeping the bones off their cave dwelling dirt floor! I had one of those old-people-picker-uppers and was using it regularly. I was quite the sight in my front yard wearing my gown and robe and using my rigid claw looking device to snag the newspaper. It worked great for the daileys, but was a tad trickier for the overgrown Sunday advertisement fest. For that I’d snag some of the plastic bag and pull it upright and then bend down ever so slightly and carry it in by the plastic bag. The main thing I have to watch out for is using my abs for the next 4 weeks. Heck my abs are the most unused muscles in my entire body anyway so that should be a piece of cake!

I’ve been allowed to drive for a whole week now and I went to the grocery store by myself Saturday. I’d forgotten that Saturday is the LAST day in the world anyone wants to go to the grocery store that doesn’t HAVE to! All those working people HAVE to shop then, I do not. I was a little tired by the time I got home and parked my buns in a chair for awhile to the utter consternation of my dog Cody who wanted to poop, eat and play in that order. I’ve washed a load or two of clothes and changed the sheets on my bed. I take out the trash with the help of my handy dandy rolling device. I’m doing whatever I need to and asking for help on the stuff that I don’t need to be doing.

I’ve been going through drawers and closets pulling out clothes that are already too big for me. A friend of my daughter’s came over Saturday and hauled off several plastic bags crammed full of stuff. She was delighted but not nearly as much as I was for getting more room in my closets and drawers. I was stunned at the sheer volume of clothes I own! I rarely wear anything out or ruin it but one gets tired of wearing the same old same old so I’d go shopping and drag home new. Like most women I also have 2 or 3 sizes because one always thinks they’ll be back in a smaller size just as soon as they trim down. Well dip me in flour and fry me in Crisco, I’m going to be able to wear those smaller sizes soon! Who would of thunk it!

When I run out of smaller stuff around here my kids suggested I go to the brand new Goodwill thrift store less than a mile away from my casa. I’m going to try and limit my clothes volume until I reach goal. Again thank God for not having to work because I can go around looking like Farmer Ted and be perfectly happy.

My official weight loss at the doctor’s was 10 pounds in 10 days for a total loss of 32 pounds in 4 months. Today on my scales I show 6 more pounds are gone. My scales never agree with any of the others, but it gives me hope that the fat is being burned in the great inferno called my body every day! Yea, me!

Next question to tackle is what exactly do I eat now. That’s a tough one to answer because it depends and it varies. Yesterday I had about ½ cup of chicken broth for breakfast, ½ of a very thin leftover half a pan seared pork chop for lunch with some asparagus, and a newly pan seared pork chop half with some more asparagus for dinner. When I got hungry around 9 or so I cut up some cucumbers and ate them with a little salt. They were yummy! I’m not supposed to eat snacks, but I couldn’t resist and I figured that cucumbers were the least evil thing I could snack on around here. The problem is that like the pork chops, one can’t just go to the store and buy 2 chops or a couple of slices of chicken. I’ve still got 4-5 pork chops in the package and they’ll go bad at my current rate of consuming ½ per meal. So I’m going to Sam’s Club and buy one of those devices that seals food in plastic to cut down on freezer burn and pop those puppies into my freezer. What I wish is that the grocery stores and such would delegate a section to those with a lesser need! I’d like to see lots of items for singles in addition to the giant family sizes! Just think, they could charge us more for smaller packaging! Now I know I could go to the butcher section and buy just one of something, but if you’ve ever looked at the selections they are HUGE too. I’m still working all this out, I’ll get back to you if I ever figure it out….

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

….and I’ve gone and gotten it! It’s simply the Roux-en-y gastric bypass surgery. I’m not talking total cure, because once diagnosed one will always have the damn disease, but cure as in remission is very, very doable as I’m seeing with my own eyes.

I underwent the Roux-en-y surgery Monday, November 6, 2006 and today, 9 days later my blood sugars have not been over 93. I’m not allowed to eat any fat or carbohydrate and one would say “well, sure, no wonder you’ll lose weight and your sugars are good! So why don’t you just stay on that diet until you lose all the weight?” ….. and I’d have to say WILLPOWER. My daughter calls the surgery “surgical willpower” and she’s nailed it. I’ve been overweight my entire life. I’ve been on every diet you can imagine. I’ve counted calories. I’ve NOT counted calories. I’ve watched my weight and I’ve BEEN a Weight Watcher. I’ve done the Atkins thing and I was very successful except that now my kidneys are failing. True I don’t know if the diet was the cause or the diabetes for 13 and ½ years, but it gives one pause nevertheless.

I'd lose 30 or even 40 pounds and put it back plus 10 more! I lost the same weight so many times I could almost call it my occupation. I don't want to be a super model, I just want to be healthy and feel like I look as good as I feel.

I’ve been told that I can look forward to saying goodbye to my CPAP unit for sleep apnea and my blood pressure medicine as well as my lipids medicine. I’m already off all my shots for diabetes and that was SEVEN a day for the past year and a half! In the past 4 months I’ve lost 31 pounds….9 of them since the surgery. I had to lose weight before I could even have the surgery as a testament to my resolve. For sure, one does not even consider doing such a drastic step if one isn’t totally committed to the belief that total change is in order. I’ve been going to a support group for Losers and I feel like I should have to stand up and say “Hi, my name is Edie and I’m a foodaholic!” BTW they call themselves ‘losers’ with pride because they are losing the weight and taking control of their lives, some for the first time in their lives like me.

My surgeon was Dr. Voravit Wongsa and he’s damned good. I’ve heard that he is rated one of the top 12 in the USA and I wouldn’t doubt it. He told my family I’d be in surgery for 1 and ½ hours and by God he took me at 10:30 a.m. and plunked me down in recovery at 12:05 p.m.! I was his 1367th patient to have some form of gastric bypass surgery. I wrote a lot about my surgery at ObesityHelp.com.

After I got home, as luck would have it, I developed a mild cold and pretty much kept saying ‘just shoot me’ to everyone within hearing range. I also had LOTS of bowel movements, each one more gross than the last. NOW I know why those that know me well have been known to say I’m full of shit! I’m not sure if it was the cold causing that grief or not, but as fast as it descended upon me it up and left. I discovered the joys of Tylenol with codeine about that time and that calmed my gut down and saw to it that I got some quality zzzz’s. I’ve had surprisingly little pain during this time. I’ve gotten some weird pain that I’d call “stitches” in my side, but absolutely no pain from the 6 little stapled holes that just sit there and grin back at me with their grills. They’ll lose their grills tomorrow when he takes them all out. I’m not looking forward to that, but I plan on doping up on the Tylenol with codeine before I go!

I told as few people as feasible that I was going “under the knife”. My mind was made up and I didn’t want to hear any horror stories. My job was to go in as calm as possible with a good positive outlook for my recovery. I did my job well and I’m still doing it. There are downsides to this surgery, but I truly believe that this was my last chance at a healthy and prolonged life. My mom died at 64 and my dad at 61. My husband died at 56. I want my kids to have to plunge a wooden stake in my heart to get rid of me! I want to sit on the porch at an old folk’s home and rock, fart and ogle the old men!

I’m sure I’ll have more to say on this subject as time goes by, but this blog is not going to turn into my R-N-Y Saga. If it was I’d rename the whole thing Me and My Walnut or something. So now you all know why I’ve been so quiet and this blog has been so inactive lately. I’m baaaaack now! If you've read all this, bless your heart and thank you too!

And a stuffed shirt is not an A-hole, but that's another post for another day.

The whole post puts me in mind of the good old days of Commodore when my pal Chester and me were into scoring anything and everything we could get for our C64s. His wife, a very non-technical person who made no bones about her disdain for all things Commodorish overhear us talking about getting copies of some "spreadsheets" and she went ballistic thinking The Worst. She was sure something nefarious was afoot. We still laugh about it......me and him that is.......she is marital history. Ah thems were the good old daze..... miss 'em, miss him too.

That's all well and good for those that DO register and then reside where they say they are going to, but in my Grand Jury alone we've indicted 21 for Failure To Register. We're only 1 of 6 and we've got one more day to do our thing. Those 21 are the ones that Harris County knows about. How many are as yet undiscovered and living among us? All the zipcode look-ups in the world won't help if someone isn't living where they say they are. And each and every one of those 21 are "2B's"....meaning they still don't know where they are, they have yet to be picked up, they are under the radar somewhere. Personally I'll betcha that more than 3/4 of them are South of the Border.

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Those easiest to disarm are the responsible and law abiding citizens whose guns represent no meaningful social problem. Irresponsible and criminal owners, whose gun possession creates or exacerbates so many social ills, are the ones most difficult to disarm.
- Don Kates